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Tilda – The Yakuake terminal equivalent for Gnome

11 June 20077 Comments

I finally discovered there was an answer to my long, lost friend Yakuake that I gave up when I moved from KDE to Gnome. Katapult, of course was easily replaced by Deskbar but I couldn’t find a Yakuake replacement until now.

The answer, as in the title of the post, is “Tilda”

Why are Yakuake and Tilda so great? Well, I keep a terminal window open 24/7 and it’s just another space taker on my taskbar. With Yakuake and Tilda, the terminal window opens hidden upon startup and when you need it, press the shortcut key ( I bind mine to F12 as it was with Yakuake but the default for Tilda is F1) and your terminal emulator slides down out of the top of the screen ready for use. F12 again and it slides back up, as if it totally disappeared.

I had been missing this when I moved from KDE -> Gnome but no longer –

The one thing where I think Yakuake was better is the way you open, closed and moved between tabs in the terminals, that is

Shift+Up arrow = new tab vs Ctrl+shift+T in TildaShift+Down arrow = close tab vs Right-click -> Close tabShift+Left arrow = Scroll to the next tab to the left vs no equivalent in TildaShift+Right arrow = Scroll to the next tab to the right vs no equivalent in Tilda

So, if the tab scroll and close tab options would be added to tilda, I would be in slide-in terminal heaven.

I haven’t tried Guake in approx. 2 years but back then it couldn’t do certain things that Yakuake can do easily. Yakuake can expand / shrink the terminal by 10% increments using alt+shift+ left / right / up / down. Full screen Ctrl + shift + F11. Move a terminal left/right = Ctrl + Shift + left/right. Split a terminal horizontally / vertically. Apart from being a Gnome app, what makes Guake better than Yakuake from your perspective?